November 07, 2013

Even the most mundane and natural of activities requires study. Every individual will have their own holding pattern and skilled action in aiming at the receptacle. It isn't a sport but eye/hand corrdination are shared. Taking your eyes off the balls could result in disaster, especially in a public place.

Let us hope that the insights from this latest study will help everyone in this deceptively simple but risky manoevre.

November 05, 2013

Germany's actions become more contorted in their reaction to the revelations of spying. It appears that the British embassy has undertaken surveillance of Berlin. No doubt this has been taking place since the beginning of the Cold War with various permutations. As the Telegraph article notes, the Russian embassy is only one street away (and I wonder where the French embassy is).

The German Foreign Ministry has called in British embassy staff in Berlin for an explanation. If they do extend this path of displeasure and create further difficulties with the 'Five Eyes', this will represent a further turn towards neutrality in Mitteleuropa; a turn noted in Atlanticist capitals and a further reminder that NATO remains in form, but that trust in collective action must further diminish.

November 03, 2013

No surprises that Britain, specifically GCHQ, has become the Atlantic Bridge, between European and North American surveillance. It is quite astonishing that GCHQ's role encompassed training, assessment of their competence and acting as a negotiator in passing knowhow on elint exercises. Now their role is out in the open, though there is a muted call for reform in the United Kingdom. No doubt a perverse pride in the role of the spies helps and the strong relationship with the telecommunications and internet companies remain in place (Does this explain the appointment of Huawei? A sanctioned link to the Chinese? Have we been exporting our expertise even to Beijing? And importing theirs?)

The role of Germany is unclear. The attempts by the German secret services to enhance surveillance have caused immense oppoition at home. This may stem from Angela Merkel's experience of living in Eastern Germany and explains her personal anger at actions associated with police states. The revelations have set off a number of diplomatoic activities that Putin's Russia have been quick to capitalise upon. Germany and Brazil have drafted a non-binding UN resolution that calls for the end of mass surveillance and will be supported by many countries that undertake such activities so that they can continue to embarrass the United States. There are also calls to give Snowden asylum in Germany: a move that could represent a distinct rupture in the security alliance between Germany and the rest of the West.

The actions of Germany indicate a restlessness in its role, with rumours that there are moves either towards or away from the United States. Clearly, there is a greater sensitivity towards surveillance in Germany amongst its politicians than in other polities and this results in statements and diplomatic actions.

But like priests at confession: spies can only listen; they are unable to change very much in the long run. But they can cause corrosion of our laws and governance. Best they stop then.

August 18, 2013

Drifting across the BBC website, looking for references to "independent" think tanks, I read the curious title: European forests bear 'carbon saturation point'. This title implied that European forests would no longer be able to absorb carbon. A curiosity which, at first glance, refuted the known processes by which plants feed themselves. A closer examination of the article revealed that this was a cursory summary of a science article released in Nature Climate Change. The authors warned that the European carbon sink may prove less absorbent than anticipated due to changes in human land-use increasing deforestation, an increase in wildfires and a change in tree demography with older stands predominating with a reduced ability to soak up carbon.

This may or may not be true, but some of the projections appear highly speculative. This is another article extrapolating what could be, and we all know how those tend to be disproved as the years pass. There was little or no criticism of the article included. And Mark Kinver concluded with a reference to teh proposed solution: a pan-European legally binding treaty on forest management which would force property owners to deal with forests as the state saw fit in the name of climate change.

This does tick the boxes: climate change problem, BBC article, proposed European solution forcing everyone to obey some fiat law from on high without any real scientific evidence. Just one article: hardly a consensus - which is the cited requirement for policy, except when it doesn't suit the requirements.

May 08, 2013

I attended a lecture and book luanch this evening by Gavin Hewitt, BBC Editor for Europe, who has taken time oit to write a tome of contemporary history on the elite proceedings during the current crisis of the €. Hewitt set the stage with some thoughts on the emasculation of leaders, the gradual growth of fears over unemployment and the erosion of an adherence to austerity.

Hewitt was honest in navigating between positions and showing how some criticisms are shared by both Europhiles and Eurosceptics. The problem is that their answers are different.

Yet, the talk omitted demographics. The depressed Mediterranean is suffering from a declining population with birthrates nowhere near replacement level. A crisis of economic growth was due to hit at some point. Yet, the crisis may have brought the effects of the demographic trap forward by encouraging emigration and creating a structural problem of youth unemployment. This would have crept up on the countries sometime within the next decade. Now that demographic death rattle can be heard within the Eurozone as a depressed depopulated desert becomes one outcome.

March 17, 2013

Shale may now prefix oil and gas but long before this, it gave us the strongest evidence of the Precambrian explosion. This was the Burgess Shale in Canada with its evidence of soft-celled invertebrates giving us a fortunate of life in those early oceans.

This gift is still giving: with a rather extraodianary hemichordate: a cousin of ours; a worm of some distinction. If Blackadder had been a palaeontologist, he would have been taken aback by the worm that looks like a thingy nestling in those warm waters. To view a modern equivalent, click on the link.

March 11, 2013

North Korea has played a strong defence from a position of weakness depending upon threats, bluster and the covert deployment of weapons of mass destruction and their proliferation to obtain aid from the West. Without such assistance, it is not clear that the existing regime: a revolutionary regime ossifying into a hereditary kleptocracy would have survived without reform. (One looks to the red princelings of its big brother, China, to see how one party states follow this path, even without personality cults).

North Korea has recently conducted another nuclear test and stated that it has a ballistic missile almost ready for intercontinental attacks. The new leader, Kim Jong Un, has proved even more aggressive than his father (who is rumoured to have died in a fit of angry apoplexy). The rhetoric, the grooves, the moves have become shriller as the regime ups the ante.

This becomes a concern since it mirrors an increasingly assertive China. Foreign policy is partially restructured by the People's Liberation Army, which appears to wag the Communist party, not vice versa. Is it too far-fetched to think that North Korea's own repudiation of the armistice and bellicose threats to attack the US mirror those of its patron?

With treaty conditions, Chinese assertions, increased tensions on the Korean peninsula and the freedom of manoevre for radicals and hotheads to aggressively threaten the status quo, is it not a concern that war could break out in the Far East? Will the Glosters again defend Imjin?

October 07, 2012

The European Parliament is unhappy with the lack of consultation by the Council of Ministers and the Commission in regards to the proposals for economic and monetary union. Talk of a new treaty to achieve this goal is viewed as an attempt to sideline all Parliamentary assemblies (how does this tally with the dominant role of the Bundestag?). Some of the usual suspects like Elmar Brok and Daniel Cohn-Bendit have been agitating for a seat at the table. This development comes as the Commission's budget dries up under the twin pressures of overspending and austerity. The coffers have run dry.

Meanwhile, Cameron appeared on the BBC to rile Eurosceptics further with his list of empty promises. He will try and keep increases in the Commission's budget to a minimum and look at reducing immigration from the European Union (shooting himself in the foot on defending the single market) On, and the next election could be a plebiscite on membership instead of acknowledging the People's Pledge. A good example of how to forsake friends and irritate people. He is a shambles!

July 22, 2012

The European institutions have adopted the very policy positions that spell out the doom that came to Madrid (and Rome, and so on). Incompetence is wedded to demands for greater austerity and banking capital at a time of economic collapse. The Commission twists the touniquet to ensure that more blood spurts out.

Yet as more countries are taken down for the good of the whole, one does wonder at the strength of the European ideology. An outsider, aware of its flaws and irrationality, expects that the politicians will come to their senses, return to rationality and plot a course that could start to reduce these risks. Yet, they are enchanted by the irreversibility of the project: go forward, never back; except the road has almost run its course and they are out of time.

The allegiance of all centre parties to Europe will invite extremes. The Greek election was an early example. Other elections will prove more radical in the years to come. If the Europeans prove as competent here as they have in currency union, then we must view democracy in danger, from extremist illiberals and technocrats. Will Europe engineer technocratic suspensions to foil Eurosceptic takeovers; elections on ice until people have again proved their fitness to vote?

July 03, 2012

Until now, the public has received little or no evidence of collusion between banker and regulator in relation to the manipulation of the markets. Nor have they understood the wider political framework within which such contacts took place. The FSA's investigation of Barclays bank has revealed ambiguous communications between the bank, Bank of England and unnamed parties within Treasury.

The speculation is forthcoming but this could have profound implications for the Labour party, if the parliamentary investigations uncover evidence of co-operation between government and banks. Miliband's cynical distancing from the last government will be undermined by a reminder that Labour were in hock to banks, just as they are now in hock to Unite.

Nor does this let the government off the hook. Osborne's judgement may prove even more flawed when it becomes clear that his chosen vehicle for clean-up is besmirched by the antics of his predecessors. The Bank of England will suffer reputional damage and the FSA has one final triumph: kicking its rivals after they have succeeded in eviscerating its role.